It's Overcast Today Part 1

It’s overcast today in Sheffield.  It’s overcast most days.  I think that's why England colonized so many places--they wanted territory with some sun.  And the grayness is boring:  it's not a black swirl of clouds rushing in for a storm, it's not puffy clouds with beams of sunlight shining through.  It's just a big, heavy slate of gray pushing down on everything.  Sometimes it will finally rain, but it’s always a gentle rain that doesn’t even require an umbrella--it’s like water decided to hang out in the air for a while.  You don’t even get the eventfulness of a downpour, you just get some wetness to make it even more of a bummer.  I think that's why London is such an incredible city.  It's like they decided to make it so big and varied and impressive and busy and culturally rich that the weather is irrelevant.  You don't care if it's dreary, because you're heading somewhere indoors to enjoy some of the world’s finest intellectual and artistic achievements.  But in the rest of the country, it's just dreary. 

When I read Keats' anthropomorphization of the English sun,

            “So dear a picture of his sovereign power,

            And I could witness his most kingly hour,

            When he doth lighten up the golden reins,

            And paces leisurely down amber plains.”

I couldn’t help thinking “what sun are you talking about?”

I guess some people like the gray weather. But I don’t. I’ll self-diagnose and say I have seasonal affective disorder, so I take it harder than most.

And an overcast sky affects everything.  It’s not just that there’s a gray sky up there; when it’s overcast everything down here is gloomy and washed out too. Sidewalks, storefronts, trees, cars, jeans, mailboxes, dog collars, shoelaces are all transformed for the worse.  It’s most accurate to say I’ve lived in two Sheffields: one when it’s overcast, and one when it’s (occasionally) sunny.

That must be why English authors wax so poetic when the sun finally does come out. They usually feel compelled to put pen to paper when the spring sun emerges after a bleak winter.  Here’s Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights:

“In winter, nothing more dreary, in summer, nothing more divine than those glens shut in by hills, and those bluff, bold swells of heath.”

Notice how she doesn’t have the spirit to list any images when she mentions the winter--she’s been so sapped by the lack of sun that he can only muster up the adjective “dreary.” But once she writes the word “summer,” the sentence takes off with superlatives and rhythm and musicality and particularity.

Or Orwell:

“Suddenly, towards the end of March, the miracle happens and the decaying slum in which I live is transfigured. Down in the square the sooty privets have turned bright green, the leaves are thickening on the chestnut trees, the daffodils are out, the wallflowers are budding, the policeman's tunic looks positively a pleasant shade of blue, the fishmonger greets his customers with a smile, and even the sparrows are quite a different colour, having felt the balminess of the air and nerved themselves to take a bath, their first since last September.”

See, when the sun comes out everything is transfigured, down to the policeman’s tunic. Two tunics: one when the sun is out, one when it’s overcast.

My friend Jeanne came and visited me for a weekend in Sheffield.  To my surprise it was sunny and warm the entire time. She left saying Sheffield was a “magical” city. Magical?  The city described  as a “blah town,” a “collapsed industrial community,” and “the Pittsburgh and Detroit of England”?  The city of "fumes and furnace-glares" as poet Philip Larkin wrote?  But that’s what the sun can do for you.

I always wondered about this when my students go on college visits.  What if they visit a school and it’s raining that day? Wouldn’t that color your whole impression of the place?  What if they only visit two schools and it was raining for one visit but sunny for the other?  Wouldn’t the sunny one have an incredible advantage?

(Also, when you visit a school, you get one guide that day.  I’ve always wondered, what if you get a great, friendly, funny, good-looking guide?  Wouldn’t that color your whole perception of the school?  Or what if you get curt and unpleasant one?  How can you even know how you feel about a school with all the randomness that comes in a one-day visit?  You can't. All of life is probably just guesswork anyway.)

But the worst part of an overcast day isn’t that it washes out the world where you move and exist. It soon turns into a slow obliteration.  A bitterly cold day in Chicago has a narrative, has drama, has some aggression on which you can build your own flinty toughness.  But a gray day in Sheffield is a leaking away into flatness, into absence. You’d give anything to be in some sort of acute pain or specific trauma, because that at least has some poetry in it. Instead your brain just fogs up and you lose your claim on the afternoon.  You're a half self that can only half see, half think, half breathe, half plan, half live.

And then when the sun finally does come out, you get panicked.  The sun is out!  What should I do?  I have to get out of the house right now!!  I have to let it beam on my face with no sunglasses and I'll let it burn out my retinas if I need to!!  Shit!  Shit!  Shit!  I just started a load of laundry.  Stay there sun, stay there, I'm coming out in a second!  I need to let you soak into my exposed skin and bank it for the next 3 weeks!

In the past I've wondered how England and Spain, two countries not all that far apart, can be so different.  In Spain they party all night.  In England, most shops close by 6.  In Spain you meet to go out at 11:30 pm.  In England, you've completed your R.E.M. stage by 11:30. In Spain they're and loud and playful and dance in loose clothing.  In England they're enclosed and quiet and inhibited and thoughtful.  But these countries are only about 700 miles apart--as far apart as Chicago and New York. So what gives?  Obvious: the weather. Spain is warm and sunny and a Mediterranean climate.  England lives under a dome of drizzle.  If I had to pick only one thing that creates any country's cultural character, I'd probably go with the weather.  Finnish people are quiet and in their snow covered houses. Brazilians are gyrating their tan bodies in the street.

The sun is so damn important. In a long and wonderful routine about how New York is better than California, George Carlin then confesses that he actually lives in Los Angeles. “So why do I live here?” he asks.  “Because the sun goes down a block from my house.” Later he explains why he chooses to worship the sun instead of God:

"Overnight I became a sun-worshipper. Several reasons. First of all, I can see the sun, okay? Unlike some other gods I could mention, I can actually see the sun. I'm big on that. If I can see something, I don't know, it kind of helps the credibility along, you know? So every day I can see the sun, as it gives me everything I need; heat, light, food, flowers in the park, reflections on the lake, an occasional skin cancer, but hey. At least there are no crucifixions, and we're not setting people on fire simply because they don't agree with us. Sun worship is fairly simple. There's no mystery, no miracles, no pageantry, no one asks for money, there are no songs to learn, and we don't have a special building where we all gather once a week to compare clothing. And the best thing about the sun, it never tells me I'm unworthy. Doesn't tell me I'm a bad person who needs to be saved. Hasn't said an unkind word. Treats me fine. So, I worship the sun. But, I don't pray to the sun. Know why? I wouldn't presume on our friendship. It's not polite."